A police detective talks with friends of one of the victims at a murder scene in Santa Ana on Wednesday, August 7, 2019. A man went on a stabbing spree in Garden Grove and Santa Ana that resulted in four people dead. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Darnell Kemp lives just a few blocks from where a man with a very large knife launched a crazy, random killing spree.

Yet neither Kemp nor her neighbors are broken – nor do they live in fear.

Instead, they affirm that just as we face tragedy together we also grow closer together.

Kemp was at her house when she received the first of several texts from a friend. Police had closed off the 12000 block of Jentges Avenue, just a few blocks from her home of 14 years.

Within minutes, the news was all over Facebook, Instagram, mainstream media. Someone was driving around stabbing people and it appeared an apartment block on Jentges Avenue was ground zero.

Soon, Kemp learned one man was dead on a nearby balcony and another had been rushed to a hospital.

At first, Kemp, a Fullerton College professor, was shocked. What was going on?

Only a few days ago, three men had been arrested in Garden Grove in a drug deal gone very bad. An Irvine man had even been shot and killed.

Then just the day before, a woman had been found stabbed to death in her home and police considered her son “a person of interest.”

Now, more bloodshed.

“I’m a little bit in shock and I’m feeling concerned,” Kemp conceded on Thursday. “Why are we in the news so much?”

But after getting over the initial shock, Kemp allowed bad things – just like good things – sometimes come in waves.

To put things in perspective, Kemp told me that the hottest topic in Garden Grove usually concerns coyotes. Yes, the four-legged furry kind.

As with many parts of Orange County – and the West – coyotes eat people’s pets. To be sure, said Kemp of her two very robust cats, life could be worse.

Instead of living in denial or overstating the tragedy, the Garden Grove Neighborhood Association, too, took the high road and spoke of gratitude.

“Deadly times in Garden Grove,” the association reported on Facebook. “Take time to pray for the victims and their families, our community, our police Chief Tom DaRe and his police officers and our city leaders.”

Yet the Garden Grove Neighborhood Association’s graciousness didn’t stop there. The site went on to state, “Thank you Santa Ana PD for taking the killer into custody.”

Just a few miles away in Santa Ana, Rosa Diaz echoed Kemp and figuratively drew a line in the sand for anyone allowing violence to rule.

Director of the nonprofit Nicholas Academic Centers, Diaz pointed out that she lived in Santa Ana during its worst years – the 1990s – when gang violence and nightly shootings were common.

Rosa Diaz, chief officer of operations and programs for the Nicholas Academic Centers after-school tutoring andmentoring program, was hired by co-founder Jack Mandel to help found the NAC in 2008. (Courtesy of Justin Glover)

But did that stop or even slow community connections? No. The challenges only made citizen bonds more enduring.

“We’ve learned from experience,” she shared Thursday, “that the single action of any one person isn’t enough to destroy our sense of community that we worked so hard to build.

“If you allow fear to determine your daily experience, it has a detrimental effect,” Diaz said. “Tragedy has a way of making people more cognizant of each other.”

Similar sentiments were expressed in the law enforcement community as well as from elected leaders.

During a somber news conference Thursday afternoon, Garden Grove Mayor Steven Jones emphasized, “We are a close-knit community that supports each other.”

But again, Jones offered more and offered context: “This can happen anywhere, any time.”

Following the press conference, Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin took time out to quietly share the significance as well as the complexity of getting a killer off the streets before he could do more harm.

Noting that the suspect was captured after he apparently managed to cut a security guard’s gun from the man’s duty belt, Valentin noted there likely would have been more deaths if police didn’t have seamless inter-departmental coordination.

“It continues to be imperative that during these mass casualty incidents,” Valentin explained, “that all levels of public safety and government work together, that communication is flowing both ways.”

Valentin, however, had more to say and pointed out that true collaboration involves everyone, first responders as well as residents.

“We’re vested,” Valentin emphasized. “We’re in this together.”

The spirit of the comments reminds me of a song my mother used to sing. “This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York island.”

David Whiting is the award-winning Metro Columnist at The Orange County Register. He also can be heard on radio, has served as a television news anchor and speaks frequently at organizations and universities. He previously was an assistant managing editor and has received Columbia University’s Race and Ethnicity Award, National Headliner awards and Sigma Delta Chi’s Public Service Award. He recently was invited to participate in an exchange program with Chinese journalists. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School for Journalism. He is a two-time Ironman, a two-time Boston marathoner and has climbed the highest mountains in Africa and North and South America.

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